Loan borrowers present their service providers with unique marketing challenges and business issues. In a typical loan procurement scenario, a prospective borrower will approach a loan broker to find an appropriate loan. While some borrowers may be able to approach a bank or lender directly, it is more common for a borrower to work with a broker or loan originator who can present the borrower with a wide set of loan offers, products and services. The entire process for procuring a loan from a lender for a borrower is called loan origination.
In order to match the prospective borrower with relevant loan offers and promotions, the loan broker will take application information from the borrower and fill out the loan application. While historically this work was done on paper, recent advances in technology have made online and software-based applications commonplace. A loan brokerage service will typically use one of the many loan origination software (LOS) systems that are available to facilitate the information retrieval. Such LOS systems include Encompass®, Genesis 2000®, Contour The Loan Handler®, Calyx, and Byte. Encompass®, Genesis 2000® and Contour The Loan Handler® are trademarked products of the assignee of this application, EllieMae, Inc.
Once an application is filled out, the loan broker then has the task of finding relevant promotional offers, products and services (“loan products”) that best match the borrower. This process is often slow, laborious and inaccurate, as the broker may not have access to all of the best and most updated loan products. Lenders and suppliers of loan products and services constantly generate new products for potential borrowers, and it may be difficult for a loan originator to keep track of all of these changes.